Camille Paglia on Lena Dunham. 2016-04-14

By Xah Lee. Date: 2019-07-28.

Camille Paglia talks to Ella Whelan about feminism. 2016-04-14

Topics: Feminism, Bourgeoisie, Culture Wars

2022-11-04

Transcript

0:00
well lena dunham to me is just the absolutely the symbol of a certain kind of neuroticism which masquerades as
0:06
feminism I mean Lena Dunham has a lot of problems that I've had that have to do with body image I call her Lee you know the interent
0:12
workin of today this mistake this is exposure of the body as something ugly and in something
0:19
is repugnant and yet somehow as sexual and then and the implied blame that if
0:27
you find me ugly then you don't understand that I am woman as she is okay and you are a sexist okay
0:33
I'm sorry no you are just a big big pile of pudding hi I'm Ali Whelan from spiked
0:40
online and today I'm in Philadelphia talking to Professor kamila Polya who is
0:45
the professor of Buddhist studies and humanities at the University of Arts in Philadelphia and also the author of many
0:51
books most recently glittering images so Camille thank you for coming you know one of the most demeaning things that is
0:59
happening to women at the moment is feminism it's campus feminism that are telling young women that they are too
1:04
weak too vulnerable and unable to to get on with life and get and get on and deal
1:09
with the things that happen to them themselves without the kind of authority stepping in where do you see this is
1:15
coming from it hasn't just dropped out of the sky you know these aren't just kind of nuts young women going around
1:20
dragging their cat their mattresses around campus for fun where has it come from well a problem is that young women
1:27
today at least in America I don't know how you know how does a rock but in America it's a whole generation of young
1:32
people have been in have been raised in a very protected environment right right now they seem as a couch you know the
1:39
classroom teacher I have to say that they just seem to me as if you know their view of the world their education
1:48
was from my observation was rather banal that is they they've been taught
1:53
humanitarian fellow-feeling they've been taught how to get along no bullying okay they've taught to be to be you know very
1:59
nice about about anyone different like transgender or people with a disability and and so on and so forth but they have
2:05
they have very little sense of world history they have a very little sense of world geography now I think it's really
2:11
serious problem in the United States whereas in Europe Europe with so many different countries and also England and
2:19
UK in general has it has that international kind of perspective coming from the the remnants of the old British
2:24
Empire so there's a sense of the world you know it's one one listens the BBC news it's about everywhere in the world
2:30
America is extremely insular the way we're separated by these giant oceans for everything else so and then and then
2:37
there's Canada up there and as Mexico down there but basically it's like this in each one of our states are as big as
2:42
the countries of Europe and so I that's what I feel that that the most
2:47
pernicious aspects of feminism I really had in the United States and because of this insularity
2:53
and also because of ours very strange college system which has gotten more and more recreational I mean sort of college
3:00
has nothing to do with education okay it's sort of this is social experience that people are sort of packed off to the now cost an absolute fortune is
3:07
bankrupt bankrupting students the the idea that that there's any like any central educational curriculum this was
3:14
a long abandoned it's a cafeteria style thing where people are going oh well you need to choose something from this group
3:20
of courses in that group of course in that group and then that you have post structuralism post-modernism having undermined any idea of history as
3:27
having meaning all interpretation is simply what we project and report into you know into the materials and
3:33
therefore there's a style of writing now about about society that is very fragmented it's like the New Historicism
3:38
everything is very atomized and so on there's not there's no where as I truly believe that there are huge patterns and
3:45
history that can be observed that you know and it's like big well big wave motion that like rises and then crashes
3:51
and so and that's what I see the you know the rise and fall of civilizations over over the past 5,000 years ok be
3:58
there and so you you've got this this without any if you have had no exposure
4:04
to the disasters of world history and the you know the these sophisticated
4:10
civilizations that rose like Babylon or Rome and and we're then they became very sexually tolerant and then fell okay and
4:17
so there was nothing left but the rubble so if you have had no exposure to that okay then you I honestly believe this
4:23
idea that we are moving you know it's progress visible all around us and we're moving to an ideal state that
4:30
ideal culture whether it'll be like sort of transnational global everyone will hold hands and and everyone will be
4:38
accepted for what they are okay and there'll be there'll be no more prejudice and they'll be and in the environment will be pure and clean and
4:44
so on the people have this kind of magical view of what of utopia that is there they're there in the future and
4:49
that it is progressive astir myself progressive in politics but but the
4:54
point is this progressive is idea that with that we are marching towards some perfection and that and this and that
5:00
the sit-in the signs of it are tolerant the toleration of the educated class okay for homosexuality over over for you
5:07
know or for changing gender or whatever that is to me it's the opposite to me a symptomatic claim of a civilization
5:15
just before it falls right which is that we are very tolerant and we are not
5:21
passionate okay but but there are bands of extremely passionate vandals and destroyers you know who are moving
5:27
around the edges of the civilization and he'll bring it down okay and they're in this preoccupation it seems to me with
5:34
with gender issues and with gender identity and so on okay I think it's it I think it's you know very it's
5:41
extremely limited in the long run and in this this hyper self-consciousness about Who am I okay Who am I exactly wait
5:48
where exactly on the gender you know the thing like a ruler in front of we're
5:53
exactly on the spectrum okay I located in terms of gender well I mean this is a kind of navel-gazing hey the time when
6:00
Isis is beheading people okay you know and you know in in them in the Mideast it's like it's like a kind of madness
6:06
okay Ike self-absorption all right so I mean the biggest problem as far as I'm
6:12
concerned facing determinism is is to what degree a Western feminism can be
6:17
exported to the world that that is more I think you know the complex issue facing feminism in to what extent is
6:25
Western careerist feminism you know a bad fit with with cultures that are
6:31
driven by more traditional values family centered a child centered religious okay
6:36
in orientation every that is the one that part of me working out I was after Hillary rally the other day and aside from it being
6:42
really quite extremely boring it was interesting that her speech went along the lines a very formulaic kind of line
6:49
of first of all she ticked boxed all the identities that she was in support of
6:54
women and disabled people black people and then there was transgendered and
6:59
then any kind of she gave some nods to some vague policy ideas and then it finished with the same thing again and
7:05
now I can understand that you know politics and politicians have often you know shown their support for for women
7:13
for ethnic minorities but transgenderism is a very specific thing it's a new and
7:18
very thing that represents a very small amount of people why has it got such national attention why is it in the news
7:24
all the time it's strange yes the way the endlessness over here in the media about transgender
7:31
bathrooms I mean this is the isn't pyramid obsession mega one heart can hardly pick up the newspaper without yet
7:36
another argument about transgender rather just put in a bathroom slap a thing on a gender-neutral and
7:42
let's be done with it I mean it's like it's endless yeah I guess I do think it's symptomatic of people actually on some level feeling
7:51
out of control of the actual important things that are happening on the globe okay which in which is what civilization
7:56
is threatened with extinction by suicide bombers okay ask as witnessed in
8:02
Brussels Airport and so on answer well let's it so it's like a kind of fuzziness about these about this
8:07
minor thing but but the transgender activists are extremely aggressive also and there and I there's also a kinds of
8:15
there's no doubt a censorship of a discussion of any of these issues there's a there's been a censorship for
8:21
at least 25 years now about homosexuality itself okay if you know there was a hope in the 80s that it's
8:29
some sort of a gay gene you could be found and then when it didn't okay all of a sudden there's absolute silence you
8:36
know about it and the issue about about you know to
8:42
even phrase the question how homosexual is caused it's that's considered
8:48
homophobic on the face of it okay I myself you think that it's imperative
8:53
for or everyone to ask questions about matters of the development of
9:00
personality in the development of sexual orientation I think that's um you know I'm waiting
9:05
and for some you know brave young gays okay until like two to protest against
9:12
the censorship because I I think that there are questions to be asked about it and as for transgender oh I pity I
9:17
really pity young people today in this kind of transgender environment because
9:22
the DD pressures are enormous once you feel I'm not quite comfortable okay in you know in in this the gender I
9:30
was assigned at birth and okay and so the pressures are to change change change okay you like to Telegraph it to
9:37
the world and then and then people are you know pushed along into making choices and surgical interventions and
9:43
or even taking hormones which is dangerous okay there's all kinds of all kinds of medical problems that I believe
9:50
a lot a lot of you know people are going to have in the long run when they would suddenly realize that just taking the hormones the opposite sex there and
9:55
there are side effects from all of these things right you have all these people making changes they're in they're in
10:00
their teens or even their college years you did you do all kinds of stupid crazy things I was doing stupid crazy things even in my first job okay you know
10:08
anybody I mean I don't think I finally got settled you know until I was in my late 20s probably okay in the idea that
10:15
if I were alive and you know it's not even my generation quite different now we're live now I would have ended up
10:21
doing making some stupid change okay that was absolutely wrong it just was a matter of what was fashionable or could
10:28
or could make a make its theatrical gesture at a particular moment okay you know of course one wants to make
10:33
gestures and tell you after the world and all that stuff so I'm act I think that I mean I think there are
10:39
authentically transgender people that is people who literally do have a had
10:46
originally a genetic issue I think it's a tiny tiny minority of the of the world
10:53
population very tiny such cases exist okay and it seems to me that you know
10:58
we're solid you know medical science is still developing to help such people but the idea it's not become a fashion
11:05
statement as far as I can see okay it's and it did now I think and I think in some cases the mask okay this thing
11:10
about this [ __ ] face eh sure I'm the changing the gender and what people are now being induced to think that all of
11:17
their unhappiness all of the resolve their unhappiness and their family life in their relationship to the school
11:23
religion society all of it is due to this gender issue well maybe it isn't maybe there are many other issues
11:28
psychological issues have involved here that maybe you need to get straight you know buy buy whatever okay I'm in the
11:34
old days they would you know you would have have different kinds of guidance that would help you to to focus yourself
11:40
and develop yourself psychologically spiritually culturally okay instead now all unhappiness now is is consolidated
11:47
into the gender issue which may be a genuine issue for you but now it may not be the whole issue okay and to imagine that by changing the gender or becoming
11:54
this you know this transgender saying that somehow you're going to and then we have to get the statistics okay oh so many transgender people commit
12:00
suicide we have we hear about this okay and if you don't behave next to them they're going to commit more suicide like that well maybe the suicide is not
12:07
due to the transgender thing maybe the suicide is due to the fact that they thought they hope that the transgender
12:13
solution would solve their unhappiness and it didn't okay so don't tell me okay that that their suicides entirely do
12:19
okay tip to their to the transgender problem you have absolutely no way of knowing that okay
12:24
psychology is far too complex okay for the system that you're laying on top of it which always always with all of its social you know premises do you think in
12:32
the same way that there is this real fear around talking about transgenderism a real fear about saying the wrong thing
12:39
and it kind of a real closing off of the conversation the same thing is going on on campus and that people are genuinely
12:45
afraid of talking about sex or to even think that young women are actually afraid of sex that this rape scandal
12:52
this kind of freaked out about into relations between people is a fear of
12:57
sex so discouraging to me because when I arrived in college in 1964 I came out of
13:03
this exhale II repressive period of the 1950's where Doris Day defending her virginity was like the dominant theme in
13:08
Hollywood movies and my generation just after the introduction of the the birth
13:15
control pill which finally allowed women to control their sexuality for the first time in we know millennia
13:20
we fought back against these in loco parentis rules the parietal rules and I
13:27
you know I often tell the story of how my first semester in college 1964 we
13:33
women had to sign in to our dormitories at 11 o'clock at night whereas them in the men's dormitories the men could run
13:39
free the entire night it was like so obviously and blatantly unfair
13:45
we felt like prisoners being like if we were living in a convent for having sex so it was a we're the ones who demanded
13:51
the the discarding of the parental roles and the colleges said to us okay you
13:57
know the world is dangerous we must protect you against rape okay and what
14:03
we said was we want freedom we want the freedom to risk rape that is what my
14:08
generation fought for and therefore it is extremely discouraging to me to see this this retreats ok the surrender on
14:16
the part of young women of their personal autonomy and in interest to say that they want the intrusion and
14:23
surveillance of authority figures over their private lives and I take a very extreme view which is that no college or
14:30
university should be involved in any way in the private lives of the students I
14:35
extremely concerned if if a a crime is committed then it should be reported to
14:40
the police ok if a crime is not committing committed I then forget about it ok the student should want freedom
14:46
first right but no no they want hovering they want they want they want to feel
14:52
the warm they'll you know on the warmth of the parental unit ok and young women
14:57
okay it's not a question of that they fear sex is that they have no idea what
15:04
sex is I think because they have been raised in this culture where wear skimpy
15:09
clothing is is simply standard-issue ok or they don't have any sense whatever
15:15
that exposure of the flesh or a particular choice of clothing can communicate any messages of sexual
15:21
interest or readiness and when you in the moment you talk like this that you know there's standard contemporary
15:28
feminists will say you're blaming the victim and and we have the right to dress as we want and you
15:33
and I said of course you have the right to dress as you want everyone else has it has every right to dress is there
15:39
however you have to be prepared okay for the reality of the world they do not understand the world as a dangerous place they have they have no idea
15:46
whatever about human psychology they believe that you know everything is they
15:52
think everything is very simple okay those are their these rules that everyone obeys rules they have no sense
15:57
of psychopathology okay they've apparently never gonna seen the movie psycho okay if it looks like a one of
16:03
the great movies you know of my of my adolescence that very nice people can
16:08
actually be Psychopaths I don't think they understand that okay and that and that you don't mess around with sexuality it's extremely explosive okay
16:16
so the phenomena anyway you must be prepared to defend yourself to be alert
16:21
to your environment you know wherever you are and be prepared to defend yourself against anything that might happen gateway from someone you know or
16:27
from someone you don't know but that's not how they were raised they were raised in a very what kind of once a it's like a it's a very sentimental and
16:35
in a provincial way they think of the world as basically their playpen it's like it's like a bit up to me it's an
16:42
upper-middle-class bourgeois fantasy you know about life because they've experienced nothing okay now that's not
16:47
the way I was raised because I was raised by Italian immigrants Italian immigrant family all four of my
16:52
grandparents were born in Italy and my mother right and so they and they have that philosophy the world is a dangerous place
16:57
watch out with what safely right and that you always assume okay that danger
17:05
you don't assume safety okay you see so I think that day but they've been raised in him in a in a war Schwab buffer they
17:12
were raised wrapped in cotton I think I think that I think it goes back to the to their removal from the old
17:19
working-class realities of life there are people people who are raised on a farm you know understood sex because I
17:26
saw in the animals okay people who are raised in a working-class environment or used to the idea of violence and like
17:32
crudité and so and so forth the minute you have a bourgeois culture which whether we have now okay you have this whole thing well everything is very nice
17:39
everything's very Placid everything's very safe and clean okay they've never seen anything but that okay so then they
17:44
go to college and they want the world to be like that and here's a nice boy okay and let's go
17:50
into the fraternity party well every way I mean how can you be so stupid okay so go to a fraternity party I was
17:55
like drinking like this and so on I went like falling down drunk hey welcome to my room okay okay I saw on Egypt the
18:03
stupidity is that a fraternity brother says to you do you want to go to my room okay everyone knows what that means okay
18:10
that means he's asking you want to have sex she says okay I mean she doesn't understand okay she's looking at it from this very mild
18:17
woman's point of view okay she can't imagine she doesn't want to have sex with strangers okay
18:22
she's looking for a boyfriend you know these girls that don't want to hook up they really want boyfriends okay the boys just want to hook up yeah and and
18:28
but but gender studies is telling everyone everything sex are exactly equal and you know and the only
18:34
differences are they boys are behaving badly they have to learn to behave they had to be more like girls okay you have
18:39
to be more like girls you have to talk like girls you have to act like girls you don't act like a girl you don't think like a girl and so on then you're
18:45
obviously you know sexist you maniac you have to be curbed and it cetera et cetera so I mean I think I think that at
18:51
the heart of all of this is the lack of respect for sexual differences and that actually you know human beings are
18:57
animals okay we are part of the animal realm hello okay and that in it would be I've just been in the last couple of
19:03
weeks watching ok the birds from my kitchen window okay and and there's like this this has been this constant fight
19:09
going on just to Robins that are constantly at each other there's this male Robin that's been extremely
19:14
insistent and pursuing this female Robin and she's giving him a lot of trouble okay and so turning her back and walking
19:20
away and so on right may I wrote about this in sexual personally about pigeons I would observe pigeons doing this okay and the guy keeps the milk the milk is
19:27
pursuing her and pursuing her pursuing her he's absolutely doing and she's kept turning away turning away turn away sometimes they're fighting out there and
19:32
so on but he persists okay interesting there is a make a pressure from mating okay in the animal kingdom
19:39
okay the man has to persist and make a fool of himself okay and the woman has the right to choose choose choose choose
19:44
choose and finally she gives in like that okay so this whole thing the pursuit the hunt okay and the seduction
19:50
is built into animal nature now a human being should not behave like animals boys should behave and with an honor
19:56
code is out it's an outrage for anyone to commit a fella okay you know an act of aggression
20:02
against anyone else my I'm the idea of like you know of them having sex with a woman while she's drunk this is
20:08
dishonorable behavior it's part it's crude barbaric behavior like the Vandals and Huns Vikings array of ancient times
20:15
this is not the way people civilized people should behave so I'm not excusing them but I'm saying girls wake up and
20:20
the girls have been coached now okay to imagine okay the world is a dangerous
20:26
place but not that one that they can control on their own that they can't defend themselves on their own that they have to again they expect the comment on
20:33
the presence of authority figures in every stage and they're less they're college students and they expect you
20:39
know that whatever a mistake that they might make at a fraternity party okay and then and then they may regret six
20:45
months later and a year later that somehow this isn't ridiculous to me it's ridiculous absolutely ridiculous for a
20:52
second that any university ever tolerated a complaint of a girl coming
20:57
in six months or a year after an event okay right if a real rape was committed go frigging report it okay to the police
21:04
oh no then I would have to do know they'll be horrible for me in there my name is rabbi but then once I made my accusation so terrible I have to see my
21:10
rapist okay in class oh come on this is to me this is this is this is not feminism there's enough feminism okay
21:16
this is just a bourgeois culture of excuses and a projection of likely there's a kind of prima donna thing of
21:23
like it's like you know exposing the wounds I mean the wounds make you special now the wounds give you
21:29
privilege is feminism today a middle-class enterprise a kind of a
21:34
sorority a girls group for white middle class those who are young women who want
21:39
to stick together and tell the rest of us what to do well Lena Dunham to me is just the absolutely the symbol of a
21:45
certain kind of neuroticism which masquerades as feminism I mean Lena Dunham has a lot of problems
21:51
that I've had they had to do with body image they have nothing whatever to do with with the wider society but have to
21:57
do with the chaos of her own family life and her family background and in enter so her feminism is to me a perfect
22:04
example of the kind of externalization of you know it's just like looking for social causes for for you know there's a
22:13
kind of you know huge fluidity in in her in her life that is due to the way she was raised in that
22:20
it was like in the art scene in the in New York she was raised with privilege the way she presents herself physically
22:27
it to me it's like I look look I'm just presenting myself exactly as I am I call
22:32
her Lee you know the Indra and workin of today this mistake this is exposure of
22:37
the body as something ugly and as something is repugnant and yet somehow
22:43
as sexual and then and the implied blame that if you find me ugly then you don't
22:50
understand that I am woman as she is okay and you are a sexist okay I'm sorry no you are just a pic big pile
22:58
of pudding sports not going to start but big pile of you know I'm there I mean I she's like just a classic neurotic of
23:04
the old style and wit listen not nearly as intelligent she seems to think she is I don't think she has any insight
23:09
whatever into contemporary politics the think she says just she finds sexism everywhere okay and it's like a
23:16
monomania you know with that type of feminist to see sexism everybody Oh Hillary is being treated a sexist man
23:22
excuse me Hillary has benefited enormously from being a woman people don't lay a glove on her she if she were if she were not a woman people would go
23:29
after her all her opponents would have gone after her you know far far more severely for her you know corruption her
23:35
dishonesty you know for her her I mean every like her incompetence the woman has never succeeded in any job she's
23:42
created chaos after chaos including now all of North Africa spilling his refugees into Europe her do is to attack
23:48
Hillary you know taking out you know Gaddafi and not thinking about what would happen afterwards okay it is just
23:56
absolutely ridiculous okay so like Hillary is is has benefited enormously
24:03
indeed you know it from being a woman so that nobody can anytime anyone
24:09
criticizes her immediately oh you know it's like you know and and and they have they have the vapors you know the
24:15
slightest thing in a little bit it would be absurd meaning you know the kind of stinging questions that aren't normal
24:21
okay in the in the kind of debate that goes on in the House of Commons it would object mean just like
24:27
to me it's juvenile absolutely juvenile that feminism has has definitely it
24:32
seems to me the regressed you know for I think it's high point really as a movement was in the 1970s and then it
24:39
got in the United States versus my criticism as a democratic a that it got
24:44
too much it got too partisan that they the feminist leaders such as Gloria Steinem were absolutely shameless in a
24:51
permitting feminism to become simply a tool or agent of the democratic party I mean I believe that feminism should be
24:57
beyond partisan politics and that and that like Betty Ford and Betty Ford and thought that feminism the women's
25:04
movement should welcome into it the ordinary wives and mothers and so on in the mainstream people and that's why
25:10
many for then got into trouble a hot water when she when she referred to the lavender menace homosexuality and people
25:16
think of how it's a homophobic and so on but I mean she shouldn't have used that phrase it didn't make any sense because
25:22
lesbians had never been associated with lavender that was gay guys from the most decade and so on so I it didn't quite
25:28
make sense but but the point I think she was kind of right because I she was tangling with those fanatical lesbians
25:34
not that I I was also okay and you know I was I was a lesbian okay and they were like some of those irrational angry
25:40
people have ferment in my life ferocious and and impossible to dialogue with what
25:46
Betty Ford and correctly fear that if that became the face of feminism that you would not get the outrage to it to
25:52
mainstream women feminism accepted as a kind of you know as a you know kind of
25:59
populist fruits which I went and I think that deficit feminism is continue to suffer from that that it even though there you know there
26:06
there are many african-american women who sympathize with feminist principles on the whole it does remain okay an
26:13
upper white upper-middle class movement in the United States up until this point I've said I'm not a Content prefer
26:21
meanest I don't align with this because I see it as a white kind of middle class enterprise and sort of a girls club like
26:28
a sorority almost in which there are very strict rules and and there's no
26:33
question about who prescribes them well I think I think one should not permit you know these fanatics to to steal
26:41
you know the the rubric a feminist me I think once you say I am a feminist I belong to this wing gay weird and bad I
26:47
mean I'm my wing or the pro-sex wing was silenced I mean I didn't know I bought you know I found other people eventually
26:53
who agreed with me but you know I was beaten down and expelled and right from the start okay but I never stopped
26:59
calling myself a feminist I just thought I would belong to a dissident wing you know that you know far-flung people and
27:06
eventually it took decades eventually we rose up and had that moment in the 1990s
27:11
I thought everything was fine but instead we've all we were totally requests you know once again backed it
27:16
back to this you know horrible you know no white lady's kind of feminism again but you know I I I do believe our class
27:25
issues okay I have said from the start that a working-class women but white and
27:30
in black and Hispanic I can handle themselves okay and understand the world
27:35
is a dangerous place they and I noticed it right from the start in like in Philadelphia when I first came to teach
27:42
here you can really see working-class women on the street they they are aware of their environment okay
27:48
some once a guy says something to them like often just a flirtatious thing which is a very customary in urban areas
27:54
and so on they know how to handle it okay then I mean where's the white girls okay the way they like a man spoke to me
28:01
and they get all very stiff and nervous and even as they walk by they don't know how to handle them and they're like walking victims and so on right whereas
28:08
I would notice that you know they had spent the the Latino women or the african-american women a guy system hey
28:13
you look great like that to them and they were and right back they would say something witty or they were say thank
28:18
you or whatever and the end they just the way they move you on the street you could there's at a level of alertness that you can see I mean them on the
28:24
street okay and then okay what if there's like a disagreement on the street okay these women over the working class don't have
28:30
to be taught how to raise their voices though is the bourgeois girls have to go to a class and be taught in their field
28:36
of classes let me talk say no one say no no no they louder no louder no they have
28:42
to be taught to say no just you know working class and when women have to be taught to lower their voices not to
28:48
raise them okay so I think that and I think my philosophy probably comes from the fact that my family was originally
28:54
working-class my father became eventually became a college teacher but you know by my you know I my first home
29:00
is my grandfather's house he was a factory worker okay and everyone was loud okay though look that holds
29:07
immigrant generation extremely and so in african-american culture it has that also get in their family life it's the
29:12
same thing everyone is like extremely then you have to when you go to the bourgeois office you see everyone has to
29:18
learn if you're going to work in an office environment okay if you're going to survive in it you have to learn to lower your voice because you because
29:24
those big voices are the voices of an agrarian culture it's a people yelling
29:31
to each other over the you know the farmland dinner so I get the cow that
29:36
cow has escaped you know you're yelling at the top of your lungs and then in the same thing as a street culture also in
29:42
the urban environments you know the it's well known okay then a thick neighborhoods that people are on the
29:47
street a lot okay and so there's a lot of street life okay on the corner and so
29:52
on and people are yelling to each other so I think that that that working class culture makes women strong okay I mean
29:59
that in my goodness they can be fierce I mean they're they're like you know Irish and working-class women you know who ran
30:06
bars you know Philadelphia who were fierce okay and so on you on side it's really a class issue I think yeah rather
30:12
than race or ethnicity I briefly was on living on a farm when my father got his
30:19
first job as a teacher coming out with a honking I was born while he was in college and he got a job as a high
30:24
school teacher in a safar mning town so that's our first place we moved and we lived for a while on a top floor of a
30:32
farmhouse so I observed and those women the farming what they were amazing okay
30:38
absolutely they were big voices powerful okay and it was no sense whatever okay
30:43
that they couldn't do what a man could do okay and that's what people for thousands of years that's what the
30:49
agrarian culture the sexes were equal okay they did they they had division of
30:54
labor okay but they did they all did physical work and so and so the all this weakness thing is a product okay of you
31:02
know of this period after the Industrial Revolution or women are doing office work and and there's a certain and
31:07
that's what it should be you know where the spotlight should be falling it's not about men's you know
31:12
men's prejudices about women and then trying to keep women in their place that's that's long gone I mean that may have been true in the 50s is no longer
31:19
true okay now it's a self-employed women are doing this to themselves now you know insofar as women are accepting this
31:25
persona and they want these print parental figures okay now you to to reinforce in this world the cage they've
31:33
constructed for themselves they this is what this is what you know these these white you know upper
31:38
middle-class feminists want now they want they want this parent control Authority controlled world okay where
31:44
they can live in their magic doll house and they don't have to change and they can blame all of their problems all their unhappiness on something else
31:50
there's something else on there without strengthening themselves I say it's a matter of they need to develop their
31:55
abilities to speak to analyze culture and you know and a lot comes from you know what I said before them not knowing
32:01
anything they don't they don't under the world in terms of if we can just fix these problems you know that then the
32:08
men are responsible for then we'll have utopia and they don't they don't they don't understand you know the barbarism
32:13
of history the oh they of the overwhelming pattern of history is one of you know is one of injustice and
32:19
atrocities in destruction and so on and they you know I saw their absorb with
32:26
trivialities let's throw caution to the wind and say if it came down to Trump and Hillary a knew were pushed to vote
32:33
somebody would you and who would you vote for oh I wouldn't have vote for either of them I I will be voting I will
32:39
either be writing in Bernie Sanders name or I will vote as I did last time the last election for Jill Stein of the
32:45
Green Party which I which I probably I contribute to every year and I cannot
32:50
vote I feel that Hillary Clinton is utterly corrupt okay I feel that the what her current you know positions on
32:57
on the campaign trail I've been just co-opted from what Bernie Sanders was saying because they had her polls poll
33:02
testing told her that's where the party was okay so I think she's absolutely soulless I think she's incompetent I
33:08
mean I I think I've often said Dianne Feinstein met in the senator from California should have been the first
33:15
woman president in the US she was the former mayor of San Francisco as well and if there has been a woman president
33:21
it's um because the two most qualified women Nancy Pelosi being the other one that
33:27
had the head the Speaker of the House the highest position a woman is one in the government ever in the United States
33:32
and these women didn't put themselves forward to run you know if only she would you know withdraw for whatever
33:38
reason and then they would put in Biden you probably you know Vice President Biden and I and I think Biden could win
33:44
I mean I really I really do I think I could be could beat any any one of the Republican candidates so I would vote
33:51
for Biden even though he's you know he's kind of dim you know he's like a dim bulb shall we say all right but but he's a
33:58
decent guy you know and I kind of and we say a mensch going Jewish slang and
34:04
people people like him I think the he can and he's experienced he knows the world he knows he has international connections so I think that would be
34:10
seamless you know transition and so on I mean I love Bernie Sanders but you know but the point is he it's gonna be a steep
34:16
learning curve should he win because he doesn't you know he hasn't really been in any kind of executive position before
34:22
this